Category: video

Two Cameras

When I do my interviews I try to always use two cameras. There are many benefits like:

Backup of the interview if one camera fails
Different looks using slightly wide shot and a tight shot
Helps with editing

Let me talk a little about how much two cameras can help with editing. Almost all the time you need to edit someone’s comments. This means you cut something out and when you do it the person’s head will jump on the video and give us the telltale sign that you just cut something.

Now if you have two cameras you can switch camera angles and it doesn’t tip the audience that you cut something. It will just look like you went to a different angle.

Now if you have a slightly wider shot that includes the hands then when the person is quite talkative with their hands and not just their mouth it is good to include the hands.

Besides cutting out a long comment that really doesn’t add to the storyline there are times you need to rearrange their comments. Maybe the last thing they said would make the strongest lead for the story.

Again having that second camera lets you change angles and it will look like they started with this thought.

In the end you will help the subject sound more coherent and look like this was just a straight take and easier for the audience to absorb.

Reasons to redo the interview

The first time you do interview someone be sure and tell them you may need to come back the next day or two for a second interview.

Unless you are a seasoned pro most people will not catch everything happening in real time and will notice missing information during the post processing editing time.

If this happens I highly recommend having the subject redo the parts that you liked for several reasons.

They often have changed clothes
Matching the lighting and camera angles is difficult
Matching the sound can be difficult as well

You may want to even play the video parts you liked and have them rehearse a few times before you redo it. I have found that often the person realizes they can even say it better now that they have heard themselves.

I must tell you this funny story about a seasoned photographer learning to do video for the first time. He thought of locations he wanted to use as the background for the interview his subject.

We realized that while teaching we failed to tell people to do their interviews in one place. While in a still photo that would make since to show your subject in the different locations when it came time for editing the sound didn’t match, the lighting was so different and when you finished editing the content and put the takes in the logical order of how it best told the story the guy was jumping all over the city back and forth.

It was so funny. Just imagine the evening news where instead of going to Washington to listen to the correspondent there and then to West Coast correspondent to maybe an East Coast correspondent as well it was the same person. That was what it looked like.

If you do a good job with the interview and have a well thought out storyline being told by the subjects you should be pleased with the results that if this is all the audience saw and heard it would work.

One strategy for editing most any type of production is to do a “radio” edit. Focusing your cuts and the assembly of your timeline on the dialog [AUDIO] places the content of the story as the highest priority.

Once you have this done you will then work on getting visuals to supplement the audio. More on that in the next part of Shooting Video with your DSLR.

Some more technical tips

I recommend a magnifier for your LCD. You need to be sure your shot is in focus.

Another option is using a video monitor. The advantage of external monitor is not just bigger picture for focusing and exposure control, but with some monitors like this Atomos Ninja Blade 5″ HDMI On-Camera Monitor & Recorder is recording for longer periods of time than the time limits on most DSLR cameras. You are only limited to the size of the hard drive you use.

It records up to 1080 30p/60i resolution via HDMI to an available HDD or SSD using either Apple’s ProRes or Avid’s DNxHD codecs. Recording at 10-bit with 4:2:2 color sampling, this unit provides you a monitoring and recording solution in one compact battery powered unit.

Before you turn the camera on and start your interview you need to practice. You need to interview your subject and from what you learn you then formulate your questions so that the responses help convince the audience what you want them to know just as a lawyer does to convince a jury what they want them to know about their client.

You do not want to sit down and just turn the camera on and ask the subject, “What is your story?” and expect them to give you a succinct well thought out presentation.

Get to know your subject

Even before you sit down and talk to the subject for the first time do all the research you can on the subject. Sometimes there have been other interviews done with the person that you can read or even watch.

Other than learning about the subject being the person, learn all you can about the subject of the story. If they are a coffee farmer then learn all you can about coffee.

The more you know the better questions you will ask. I like to say you are peeling an onion. Each question gets you closer to the core of the onion.

You are not just asking questions to find out everything about the subject. You are trying to find the thread that will keep someone interested in them as you reveal more and more about them to the audience.

The Bourne films are a series of action spy thriller movies based on the character Jason Bourne, a CIA assassin suffering from extreme memory loss who must figure out who he is.

To keep the audiences attention and pull them into your story you may often hold out on the juicy part of the story towards the end as they did in the Jason Bourne movies.

Your Goal

You know you are ready for the on camera interview when you have your storyline figured out from your informal interviews.

Like a lawyer who calls witnesses and interviews them to reveal in their own words the content that will help build the storyline so that the jury has no choice but to make the right call. Like a lawyer you may need to put different people on the witness stand to help build your story.

Now it is quite common that even when you have done all your homework that in the camera interview subjects can surprise you with new content that improves or even can complicate the story.

Be flexible and be sure you are listening to what they are saying.

Ideally it would be great if someone can just tell you what you need and leave out all those trails that lead no where. I have found time and time again that towards the end I have asked them to summarize what we just talked about and they often in one take say exactly what I need.

Georgia Bulldog’s Freshman Running Back #35 Brian Herrien Scores his very first collegiate touch down while UNC’s Safety #15 Donnie Miles was unable to stop him during tonights Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game September 3, 2016 at the Georgia Dome.

You see it can be just like the football game. The players have practiced so many times that often the coach just calls the play and you get the touchdown.

When doing an interview there are a few things you need to do every time.

Fill the frame

When doing an interview you need to choose good composition and background carefully. Pay attention to everything inside the frame.

Get tight on the person you are interviewing.

Kill the Noise

Once you have put the microphone in place and have your headphones on you will be able to hear all the ambient sounds. This is where everyone is quite for a moment while you just listen.

Lets say you hear the ceiling fan or the air conditioner running. I would turn these off for the interview.

If you cannot turn off something like a water fall or water fountain, then move to a quite location.

Togo, West Africa

Steady the Camera

Use a tripod or put the camera on a table. Just keep your primary camera for the interview still. If you have a second camera to use then you can maybe do something like putting that camera on a slider or fluid head that will let you move the camera during the interview.

I believe you always need one camera that is locked and on a tripod for the interview.

Togo, West Africa

Light the Subject

My suggestion is to find a great place with light so you don’t have to use lights. I find the open shade on the side of a building works as well as porches as you see in these two photos of interviews we were doing in Togo, West Africa.

Audio is King

There are times for different microphones just as there are times for different lenses. You need to know the difference between a lapel, on camera & shotgun microphone.

Sharpness is Queen

Sharp focus is critical. I advise against shooting ƒ/1.4 for video unless this is your second camera perspective. Have a depth-of-field that is forgiving if the person moves during the interview.

Use manual focus and not Auto-Focus.

Lock Down the lens

Don’t zoom in and out on your primary camera. You can do some of this with a second camera, but be sure at least one camera is locked down and you have a solid framed shot that is in focus and has enough depth-of-field that the person can move a little and still be in focus.

In Part 1 I suggested the gear you need to use your DSLR/Mirrorless camera to do video. This post will do with some basic settings I recommend for the camera when doing a video.

Nikon D5 Video Settings

Camera Video Settings

On my Nikon D5 The Frame Rate, Resolution and Frame Size all show up in the upper right hand corner of the Live View on the LCD. We need to address all three.

Resolution – I recommend Full HD 1920×1080

While there are many other resolutions like 2K, 4K, 6K and even 8K I believe they are overkill for web distribution. Even my friend Ben Smallbone whose credits include the movies: Priceless, Taken, and Steve McQueen: American Icon to name a few of his movies told me that when it came to distributing their films to movie houses all over the country that they said not to give them anything bigger than 2K.

Now there are really two resolutions in video just as there are two resolutions with stills. You have the capture setting and the exported resolution.

While you can shoot say at 4k for the similar reasons you would shoot RAW your computer must be really top of the line to process the 4K files. Unless you want to crop in on your video in post-production I believe there is little to gain for the average project to shoot higher than the Blue Ray Full HD 1920×1080 resolution.

Frame Rate – I recommend 24 Frames per Second

Here is a good video showing why 24 fps is an industry standard for movies.

24 FPS is the Cinematic Look that is used in motion pictures. There are reasons to shoot other FPS and one worth mentioning is to shoot super high rate to then slow down for that “Slow Motion” affect.

Shutter Speed – I recommend 1/48 or 1/50

As a rule of thumb, you want the denominator of your shutter speed to be approximately double the number of frames per second that you are recording. For example, when shooting at 25fps, your shutter speed should be 1/50 of a second. If you have the 24fps and do not have a 1/48 then pick the closest frame rate like 1/50 or 1/60.

Manual Mode – Shoot this rather than Aperture, Shutter or Program mode

If anything on the camera is set to automatic your exposure can change when say something changes in the frame like your subject just moves a little. The camera may think the lighting has changed and it hasn’t. Shoot manual mode and manual focus as well.

Look – use Neutral

In video, just like stills, you can pick a picture color mode. There are modes on most cameras like: Standard, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait and Neutral. If your camera doesn’t have a Neutral setting then pick Standard.

When later we cover your post production you can do more with a Neutral setting than with say Vivid. More on that in later posts on making videos with your DSLR.

Nikon D5 Audio Level

Audio Recording Settings

You want to have your recording levels set manually and not automatic for the same reasons for the video. When someone stops talking the Auto level will increase the volume and introduce noise.

Most levels on cameras or a separate recording device like the Zoom Digital Audio Recorders have a way to show you it is too loud.

Most video editors agree that the overall audio level of your audio mix (all of your audio combined) should normalized between -10db to -20db. I personally level my videos around -12db with occasional peaks to -8db.

What this means for me on my Nikon D5 is I want the level to peak right up to the last line before it goes red. I have a person talk for a while and then set the sound recording level before actually recording.

I recommend doing a test video for sound. Set your video settings to get a good exposure and audio levels for good sound. Record 30 seconds to a minute and then download to your computer and play using Quicktime or other video software that came with your computer.

For testing sound play something on your computer like music you downloaded. After you set your speakers for proper volume when listening to your music then play your video. If you have to adjust the volume to hear the recording then you need to adjust your recording levels. The biggest problem is if it is too quite or if too loud and giving you distortion.

Headphone Volume

Be very careful that you are not using the headphone volume as a way to see if the audio level is set correctly. Use the levels for audio the same way you use a histogram. Once you have those levels set then adjust your headphone volume to where you can hear properly.

Picking a location to do an interview

When picking a location you need to pay attention to two things: 1) Sound in the location and 2) lighting/visual.

My recommendation is to just turn on your microphone and put your headphones on and just listen to the environment. Are you trying to do a interview next to a waterfall or water fountain? That will prove to be difficult to impossible.

Finding a totally silent location would be “ideal,” but not always possible.

I am breaking down the topics you need to cover to start shooting Video with a DSLR. Part 1 will cover the basic gear you need. My assumption is you are interested in Storytelling.

The interview of a subject on camera is the staple of most storytelling. The gear I recommend will help you get a good interview on video.

There are many levels of production you can do when recording video with your DSLR. I am taking the approach here to start you as a one man band doing the production all yourself.

The starting point for all video is sound. People will not watch a video with poor sound. Sound is the foundation for your production.

Nikon D5 headphone and microphone jack

I recommend not trying to do video unless you have a microphone and headphone jack. The microphones built into the camera would only really work for recording interviews in the selfie distance to the camera.

The basic understanding of recording sound for the video is the get the microphone as close to the sound as possible. I use a wireless lavalier system. The system I use costs $500.

Shure FP15/83 Combo Wireless System, H5

You can buy a wired lavalier for under $50. Buy one with a long cable for interviews.

The second principle to understand is you need to isolate what is being recorded and the best way to do this is with closed-back headphones. Here is what I use.

Sennheiser HD 280 Pro Circumaural Closed-Back Monitor Headphones

You need also a good tripod to keep the camera still. Having a Pan & Tilt Fluid Head on the tripod is better than basic head.

Google your camera using a microphone and headphones. Many cameras may have a microphone jack but not a headphone jack. There are some ways to work around that for your camera. Sometimes you will find you just need to upgrade your camera.

You can add more gear, but I believe this is the super basic kit necessary to create a video.

In other blog posts to come I will talk about other microphones, lighting and gear to help you move your camera during a shoot.

Last night I photographed and video captured the show Oklahoma!. Just a last minute push to encourage you if you are in Roswell, GA to come and see the play. Runs through the weekend. Go here to buy your tickets or at the door.

Real-time monitoring, playback, playout to a PC or Mac with QuickTime, and edit logging.

Focus peaking, 0-100% zebra, and two modes of false color monitoring.

Records 10-bit, 4:2:2 in ProRes or DNxHD.

S-Log / C-Log recording.

Trigger REC/STOP from camera (Canon, Sony, ARRI, Panasonic, RED, JVC)

Timecode from camera.

2.5″ HDD/SSD media storage.

It records up to 1080 30p/60i resolution via HDMI to an available HDD or SSD using either Apple’s ProRes or Avid’s DNxHD codecs. Recording at 10-bit with 4:2:2 color sampling, this unit provides you a monitoring and recording solution in one compact battery powered unit.

If you are not a video shooter and are more of a stills shooter then for capturing video you need to be a little more hands on technically.

What I mean by this is that the exposure and sound vary through a production and you may need to adjust this as you are recording.

With the Nikon D5 attached to the Atomos Ninja Blade using the HDMI port just siphons this off before it hits the H.264 encoder and you are recording in ProRes format. This isn’t really recording in RAW video but more like a TIFF file than say a JPEG.

Now I cannot share the Oklahoma! video because of copyright. [I am recording it for the Shuler Awards in Georgia]

The cool thing is right now you can buy the Atomos Ninja Blade 5″ for $395 without a hard drive which gives you the 5″ monitor. I would recommend buying a SSD hard drive of your choice in size.

There are three more performances for me to tweak my exposure and sound on to capture the best quality possible out of my setup. At the same time each performance traditionally gets better each time.

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 2000, ƒ/5, 1/100

By the way Aunt Eller is my daughter Chelle. This is her senior year and last production. She also taught the choreography to the cast.

Fuji X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 1000, ƒ/4.5, 1/100

I hope these tips will help you thinking of ways to use your DSLR to do more than just take photos. I know I wanted to use the high quality CMOS chip to get a wonderful keepsake video of our daughter to cherish for the rest of her life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSVeDx9fk60]Back in 1993 Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell starred in Groundhog Day. It was a story where a weatherman finds himself living the same day over and over again.

He is learning from his mistakes and even intentionally makes bad choices due to his bad attitude.

While I would love to wake up each day looking like I did in college that just isn’t happening.

Here I am with my Nikon FM2 and the Nikkor 80-200mm ƒ/4. The ƒ/2.8 hadn’t been made at this time.

The lesson of Groundhog Day was really simple, you don’t get 2nd chances so do your best to make your actions positive. You reap what you sow as the saying goes.

“Moore’s law” is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years. The observation is named after Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor, whose 1965 paper described a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit,[note 1] and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years. – Wikipedia

Since 1975 until a couple of years this was still holding pretty true. The impact this had on the rest of society and particular photography was incredible.

Just in the last 14 months Sony has introduced 11+ top end mirrorless cameras. A few years ago we were talking about short duration flash to stop objects and now we are talking about High Speed Sync as a way to stop action using strobes.

photo by Robin Rayne Nelson

Education

How much have you spent on gear the last few years and then how much have you spent on education? Most of us would benefit by spending more on education than on gear.

Here are some great educational opportunities I recommend for example:

I believe the best way to learn is by doing and having someone with you teaching you as you are doing. The workshops I lead are more about hands on experience and the instructors speaking into your project as you work on it.

Bill Murray’s character Phil in the movie Groundhog Day used the repeat of a day as a workshop where he learned from his mistakes. Since Groundhog Day movie is fictional we have to look for other ways to learn how to make the best choices so we can stop the insanity of not growing but just feeling miserable.

I would love to work with you and help you develop some new skills to help you be better prepared and able to anticipate what clients need. Give me a call or write to me so I can save a spot for you this January in Chiapas, Mexico.

This is based on my experience and others may have other suggestions that might contradict my comments.

When shooting video on your Nikon D4 there are a few settings I recommend. When this becomes very critical is when you decide to start shooting more than one camera and you need everything to match when you get into post production.

In my opinion editing RAW images in Adobe Lightroom and getting images to match from different cameras is much easier and more accurate than in the video editing software of Adobe Premier or Final Cut Pro X.

Before you go to the Movie settings on the camera I recommend first creating a menu bank for Video as I have done here. This way once you have created all the settings they are saved.

When you pan left to right or right to left this is when you will see Frame Rate really affect the look and feel of the image. The public is so used to 24 fps that this is the best default. Some use 30 fps.

Many times people will shoot higher Frame Rate to then do slow motion by slowing it down to 24 fps.

Your shutter speed on the camera should be set to twice the Frame Rate for the movie settings. If you are shooting 24 frames then you will be at 1/60 since this is the closest. If you shoot 60 fps then 1/125 should be your setting.

I shoot most of the time on 1080/30fps and set also for High Quality.

Microphone setting for most all the time needs to be set manually and use the Sound Levels to adjust the volume of the recording. I highly recommend using headphones and looking at the audio meter on the viewfinder. Be careful because the recording level and the headphone volumes are set separately.

I have my color space set on Adobe RGB. You also want to then set the Picture Control.

Some of this is personal preference, but the key is if using more than one camera that all the settings be set the same or you will have trouble matching the video and color can look off switching between the cameras.

When you go to Live View in the movie mode you will be able to then adjust your microphone levels and exposure. To prevent light entering via the viewfinder from interfering with exposure, close the viewfinder eyepiece shutter.

You should go to manual mode to have the most control over the settings. Just a little movement by a subject can make the exposure to change even when the light stayed the same. Use manual mode.

As you can see from this chart you have the ability to control more in manual mode.

As far as focus I tend to use autofocus when I first have a subject framed and then go to manual focus.

The motor for lens tends to make a noise I don’t want to pick up.

Microphone

I recommend using a lavalier microphone for interviews and for natural sound and quick moving situations I recommend a shotgun microphone.

CLIENT: A production company did a video on cup recycling, and I noticed this evening that if we could get stills from the video, we’d actually have most of the images we need. I recall you saying once that stills from video on are not high res/print quality. But I went back and asked, and they assured me because they shot it in high def, they could create hi res stills. In your opinion, is that accurate?

I responded first with these two sentences:

STANLEY: First I am really impressed you remembered my comment. My comments were not so much about the resolution, but how they are shot.

Then I went on and talked about these points below here. But to inspire you to read on here was her response to my comments:

CLIENT: This is AWESOME, Stanley. I hear every word of what you are saying. All of it. I am taking it to heart and will influence this on my own team.

Aesthetic

Video is about movement and stills are about a moment. This changes a great deal of how things are shot. Often many moving shots are not very compelling when you freeze them to one frame from that movement.

This is why on every movie set has a still photographer. The stills are done slightly different than the video.

The Technical

If the video camera is 4k then you might have a pretty high-resolution image that is usable, but if I were to grab a frame from my video DSLR camera it still isn’t the resolution when the camera is set for still photography.

Today many crews use a 4K camera that is very much a usable high-resolution still image for print and the web. Just want to be sure the image is sharp. Sometimes during the movement the sharpness of a single frame isn’t that noticeable until you grab just the one frame.

If you like the image in the video and it was shot on a 4K video then the frame may just work.

Know who is pitching to you

There is way too much emphasis on video. Those promoting it are selling them on this is a replacement to stills—BIG MISTAKE!!!

Those motion capture guys [new name for videographers] that are promoting this as a replacement really are showing lack of knowledge of the industry.

The News Media

The news media have gone through a lot of changes due to digital and most importantly since 1995 the web.

For the first ten years the issue that slowed the progress was the bandwidth. It took a while to get us from dial up to now the ability to stream HD video on the web.

Once the ability to deliver video became possible many naïve PR folks started to think this is the new standard and that the still image was dead.

I recommend before reading further you go to these television websites where you would expect the video to be king. Take a moment and do the following.

When looking at the main page notice how many images in general are used and how big the images are as compared to text.

Pay special attention to the visual promoting a video link.

Click on a few of those links to the videos.

How often did the still image you click on actually show up in the video?

Do your own survey of a few of the stories on the website.

Here are the links I recommend that you take a few minutes to do your own research and then come back and read the rest of this blog. [FYI to avoid copyright infringement I did not copy the screens and post them here]

My point is you have video production companies over selling and burning chunks of your budget on video when your media may need that, but need still first. Video is in addition and not a replacement for stills.

So think about it this way. You have the opportunity to supply all that an editor needs to post to their website the way they post their own stories. Sure in a pinch they may grab a frame from a video, but this is the exception and not the rule for even TV.

I think that PR needs to start supplying the package as the media shoots it. Way too many PR firms continue to operate the way they did in the 1970s. They continue to pitch is assuming new media outlets have the budget to come and cover their event. Get them to like the story and let them come and cover it, that was the mentality back 30 years ago.

This is 2014 where their budgets have all been slashed. I worked at Georgia Tech where we supplied the entire package. Text, Stills and Video for packages and were used all over the media regularly. On average we were in the AJC every day of the year.

Georgia Tech is still ranked one of the top schools and it had a great deal to do with the PR office I worked in for more than 10 years created. John Toon, director of communication for many years, was the master of getting stories placed. He knew to not pitch something just because a researcher or professor wanted it promoted. He vetted those requests and help to get the cream of the crop.

When John Toon’s material went to a news director desk they opened it because he was known for giving them great content and in a way they could use it with very little effort or budget on their part.

Both—Not Either/Or

Please don’t hear me saying don’t use video and use stills instead. I am saying you need stills and video. I think video production companies does a disservice when they tell you they can do it all and they never have their material in major magazines or news outlets on a regular basis.

Many of these companies produce high-end video that is used in meetings and events. Their work is superb. But it isn’t what the media creates and runs.

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